Buy it... if you're among the vast majority that will seek the
album for its easy-going collection of Louis Armstrong and Ella
Fitzgerald songs.

Avoid it... if you expect any truly compelling drama to come from
the 20+ minutes of Mark Isham's mundane score on the album's first
half.

EDITORIAL REVIEW

FILMTRACKS TRAFFIC RANK: #949

WRITTEN
1/29/99, REVISED 4/26/08

BUY IT

Isham

At First Sight: (Mark Isham) Irwin Winkler's 1999
film At First Sight made the fatal mistake of trying to be both a
serious examination of blindness and a sappy Hollywood love story,
earning it a mediocre response from critics. Not only do the blind face
a unique set of prejudices, but the few who have lived a life of
darkness and are then faced with the awesome sense of sight often face
significant psychological adjustments. At First Sight, based on
Oliver Sacks' "To See and Not See," offers insight into just that
experience. But rather than concentrate on the specifics of that curious
transition, the film uses it as a tool to extend the melodrama of the
love story likely deemed necessary to sell tickets. The relationship
between Val Kilmer's blind masseur and Mira Sorvino's caring architect
goes through all the typically ebbs and flows you'd typically expect,
though it's a means of driving home the point of acceptance in a broader
sense rather than actually exemplify to a normally-seeing person what it
would be like to experience this radical change. Still, despite the
film's clumsy attempts to explore serious territory, At First
Sight ultimately generates a lovable atmosphere, and that tone is
extended by Mark Isham's score for the film. Isham's ability to
accentuate the sounds of Manhattan may have been well served by the
composer's jazzy tendencies, but surprisingly, the composer completely
ignores this avenue of possibility. The extremely conservative stature
of the score is curious given the significant use of Louis Armstrong and
Ella Fitzgerald-performed songs written by old favorites like the
Gershwins and Rodgers and Hammerstein. The film seems to take the spirit
of these songs to heart, and the album release for At First Sight
heavily emphasizes them, but Isham did not follow their direction.
Instead, he seemed caught in the same conundrum of aimless direction
that plagued the film, and it would be fair to speculate that his score
may be among the reasons why At First Sight sounds so stale. That
said, there's nothing technically wrong with the music. It just could
have had so much more of an impact than it did.

The entirety of Isham's music for At First Sight
is absent of any of his jazzy roots, instead opting for an extremely
conservative orchestral score dominated by sensitive, but uninspiring
piano solos. The composer's love theme is generic, as are the variations
that result from the troubles that the primary couple face, and the
music for the blind man's confusion over his first sight is given
underachieving moments of less tonal suspense. Isham intentionally chose
this path, stating, "I composed music to reflect interior states. For
me, to express such emotions, it's always a question of harmony and
color. This could be achieved electronically or with any combination of
instruments. We chose the orchestra, which is considered to have the
most accessible sound, with its ability to convey the broad range of
emotions within this story." Unfortunately, with an emphasis on
providing themes for moments rather than characters, nebulous concepts
rather than the concrete, Isham's music lacks an overarching identity.
Two of its middle cues, "To Share a Feeling" and "A Seeing Journey,"
pick up the pace with optimistic piano rhythms and flighty woodwinds,
though the remainder of the score is frightfully dull. A distantly mixed
women's choir adds welcome mystery to "A Seeing Celebration" and "You
Don't See Me," but their impact is minimal. A sense of cohesion starts
to form by the concluding "Our Eyes Aren't What Make Us See" cue, during
which the love theme starts to develop some warmth and hints of Isham's
more successful scores shine through. But only twenty minutes of score
material on album is too short to engage the listener, and it's the
collection of songs that is far more entertaining. Isham's love theme
was adapted into a loungey jazz piece for the end credits by Marilyn and
Alan Bergman, with a spirit sorely lacking in the underscore. Isham's
work fails to follow the emotional rollercoaster that the film strives
to be, and as such, it both grounds the film with the anchor of its
serious concept while also diminishing the love story. With less than 25
minutes of score on the Milan album, the score is a pleasant atmospheric
listening experience, but it constantly exudes the feeling that it's
underplaying its role. **@Amazon.com: CD or
Download

Bias Check:

For Mark Isham reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.86
(in 22 reviews)and the average viewer rating is 2.86
(in 8,575 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.

The insert includes no extra information about the score or film. In a statement
from the time, Isham wrote the following:

"My music addressed the romance within
At First Sight more than it did the fact of Val Kilmer's character,
Virgil, being blind. There were a few scenes where the music needed to speak
about his new experience, that of regaining sight, an experience that was both
good and bad. Toward the end of the film, when he begins to revert to blindness,
the tragedy isn't that he can't see, but that his and Mira Sorvino's character
(Amy) aren't going to be together; the music was designed to underline that.

The first place that we are aware of the unnerving aspects of regaining sight is
when Virgil's bandages are removed, with a number of shots representing his
point of view, with layers of unfocussed footage and unusual camera angles
representing his disorientation. I tried to express his fear in the score. The
visuals give you the objective sense of what he sees. This is a very specific
issue; he's obviously used to being able to sense the presence of other people
around him, then this sense has been thrown off after the operation. I had to
simplify this, and communicate with music what it felt like, to have this new
sense scare the hell out of him. So there's Virgil's initial fear, and then that
of his sister and Amy, as the camera moves from his point of view to their
reaction shots, once they realize that something isn't right and become afraid
for him. Music can't be very objective; indeed, it's 99.9 % subjective. So,
while the music can't say "My eyes are going bad" in a direct fashion, it can
communicate the terror felt by someone experiencing that.

For me, to express such emotions, it's always a question of harmony and color. This could be
achieved electronically or with any combination of instruments. We chose the
orchestra, which is considered to have the most accessible sound, with its
ability to convey the broad range of emotions within this story. We started with
a large orchestra, and began to reduce the elements as we needed for more
intimate moments in the film, until it was down to a piano and strings for some
sequences.

I wrote themes, not for individual characters, but for points in the story.
There was a theme for their love scenes. There was a breakup theme; two scenes
had them very close to breaking up, and another where they actually did. There's
a theme that I developed to underscore the two people discussing things that
were important to them: Amy talks about her childhood, and when they're both
sitting on the park bench in New York, Virgil talks about what he's always
wanted, someone to accept him as he is, and that he wants Amy to be that person.

I composed music to reflect interior states, the specific cognitions which
Virgil experienced, such as when he's seeing himself for the first time in the
mirror or when he finally glimpses the 'puffy' object that was his one distinct
memory from when he had sight as a child: the cotton candy that he sees at the
hockey game with Amy. Those scenes are about very personal experiences, there's
hardly any dialogue, and their significance is underlined by the music.
Obviously, being able to see changed his life, but those were ultimate moments,
and as such required special musical treatment.

The picture itself does much of the work at the end of the film, as far as
letting you know that these two people will still be a couple. My music swells
as Amy takes Virgil's hand and puts it on her face for the last time. There's
the final instrumental statement of the theme, and then he faces her. As they
turn away and the audience realizes that they will have a life together, then
the end title song, "Love Is Where You Are," based on that theme, is heard with
Diana Krall singing.

Marilyn and Alan Bergman wrote the words for "Love Is Where You Are." Irwin Winkler
brought them in and together we oversaw a couple of demo versions of the song.
It's still quite an adventure for me, song writing. I've adapted a number of
songs as score for earlier pictures, but this was my first time collaborating on
an original song."